Brown and Green make Blue: Birthday cake

I've been meaning to post pictures of the cake from Micah's birthday. Since it was almost a month ago already I figured it was about time to take care of posting!

I like to ask the boys what type of cake they would like to have and then I look on the internet for ideas of how to make it. I'll readily admit to steering them a little bit so I don't have to make anything too hard! For Micah's birthday, Jason thought he would entertain himself by throwing out all sorts of random (and difficult!) cake options. I sat and grumbled at his suggestions while he sat and laughed. About a week before Micah's birthday I was pretty sure he had decided on a castle cake. Not an ideal option in my opinion, but I thought I found a way to make it happen without having to make a million pounds of cake. A couple days before Micah's birthday I mentioned to him that I was getting ready to make a castle cake. He promptly announced that he DID NOT want a castle. He wanted a pirate ship! Another suggestion from his father. So, back to the drawing board I went. I found an idea online and it actually ended up being a simple cake to make! I would rub that in with Jason, but then I know he'll just make even worse suggestions for the next birthdays!

Here is how the pirate ship cake came together. First I made two round cakes:

Then, I cut them in half,

slathered them with frosting and lined them up with each other:

I trimmed a little off of all of them for a flat surface:

I flipped them into a pan and put the cake in the freezer overnight.

On his birthday I made a whole bunch of brown frosting, did a base coat of brown over the cake, and then piped lines in for the boards.

I added more frosting to give the "deck" of the ship some sides:

And then added a bunch of waves/water around the ship.

I took a break to print out birthday wishes on the computer and then fashioned sails out of the paper and some wooden skewers.

Then I raided the Playmobil toys for Pirate characters (washed them) and added them to the deck of the ship.

Since we didn't want to start the sails on fire with the candles, we added them on the end of the ship so they were like cannons.

Then, we presented the cake to my four-year-old boy. He was thrillled with the cake and thought it was pretty cool that some of his toys were on the ship. :) Judging from the grin on his face, I would say that the cake was a success!